What are the potential pitfalls of using special characters in PHP when storing data in a database?

Special characters in PHP can cause issues when storing data in a database, especially if the data is not properly sanitized or escaped. This can lead to SQL injection attacks or data corruption. To prevent this, it's important to use prepared statements or escape the special characters before storing the data in the database. 

// Example of using prepared statements to insert data into a database
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2) VALUES (:value1, :value2)");
$stmt->bindParam(':value1', $value1);
$stmt->bindParam(':value2', $value2);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection data sanitization htmlspecialchars htmlentities escaping characters

Related Questions